“I was nine years old when I saw them beat my mother”: Cuban exile recalls episode of repression in 1970

"On a day like today, January 17, 1970, agents from the G2 arrived at my house, banging on the door. My grandmother was held at gunpoint with a shotgun, my grandfather was handcuffed, and my mother was dragged away. I was nine years old."

This is how the testimony of Engie Álvarez begins, daughter of the political prisoner Ena Álvarez, one of the hundreds of Cuban women who endured imprisonment and torture for political reasons in the early decades of the communist regime.

Engie recalls that that early morning, agents from the G2 (the Cuban political police) burst into his home following a report from the president of the Committee for the Defense of the Revolution (CDR), who claimed to have heard "transmission sounds" that she attributed to messages sent to the CIA.

“Actually, it was the interference from the broadcaster La Voz de las Américas,” reported the exile from Miami in a post on Facebook.

During the operation, his mother Ena, recently released from prison six years prior, was beaten and dragged by the officers.

"A tall olive green soldier pushed her and struck her with his fist. She fell in the street and hit her head on the curb," her daughter reports.

“She was unconscious for a few minutes. They put her in a patrol car with her head wrapped in a bloody towel and took her to Villa Marista,” he recounted.

Ena Álvarez, according to the International Committee of Cuban Political Prisoners, had been sentenced to death in 1960 for a political reason, although the sentence was commuted to six years in prison due to her being pregnant.

In the women's prison of Guanabacoa, she gave birth handcuffed to her daughter Enita, after being beaten by the guards.

The woman would serve a second sentence in the 1970s. She died in exile, in Miami, on July 12, 2010.

"This is one of the many stories of abuse we have experienced since my mother was released from prison. I keep telling it because it is a truth they want to silence, to the shame of those who have allowed the violation of human rights in Cuba," Engie concluded.

During the 1960s and 70s, hundreds of women were imprisoned for political reasons in Cuba, many of them accused of "counter-revolution" or "subversive activities."

Organizations such as the International Committee of Cuban Political Prisoners document torture, childbirth in prison, and inhumane conditions that persist as open wounds in the memory of exile.